Millennials More Likely To Fall For Scams Than Baby Boomers (washingtonexaminer.com)

A new report from the Better Business Bureau suggests that millennials are now more likely to fall victim to a scam than Baby Boomers. Washington Examiner reports: The Better Business Bureau reports that 69 percent of scam victims are under the age of 45. Young adults heading off to college are especially gullible, the group says. "College students can be easy targets for scammers and identity thieves. They are old enough to have money, young enough to be vulnerable and are likely unsupervised as many are away from home for the first time," writes Heather Massey of the Better Business Bureau. Phishing scams now target cell phones as well as email and social media.

"Millennials spend a lot of time on Facebook or other social media sites, where they can target them with these messages," said Jim Hegarty, Better Business Bureau president and CEO. College students also use sensitive information frequently, like student IDs, Social Security numbers, and banking information.

Comments

A trusting bunch

[plopez]

Sheep to the slaughter.

Re:A trusting bunch

[ShanghaiBill]

There is nothing new about this. I was in Berkeley in the early 1980s, back when the new freshmen were still boomers. In September, the panhandlers and scammers would be lined up along Telegraph Avenue. By October, the students would be jaded and cynical.

Re:A trusting bunch

[alvinrod]

Normally I'd ask if they aren't just sure it's a matter of age, with young people lacking the experience of being scammed that the older generation has become wary to after falling prey to it enough times. It's pretty hard to find any 17 year old baby boomers to test after all.

Of course, there was the recent /. article about the younger generation thinking socialism was a good idea so the millennials could genuinely be naive, gullible fools. But is is fair to blame them for any of this, or should we really blame the generation that raised them to be this way?

Re:A trusting bunch

[LynnwoodRooster]

That sounds AWESOME! I'd love to buy it from you and set up an eco-preserve commune where cars are electric only and all is solar and vegan. I can pay for it next week when this Nigerian prince pays me my commission for helping him move $25,000,000 out of his country! I gave him my bank account, I should be getting a deposit any day now!

Re:A trusting bunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheep to the slaughter.

Indeed, this is why Apple is doing so well... AND getting away with crazy profits.

Also... in other news.. water is STILL wet!

CAPTCHA: approve

Re:A trusting bunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, there was the recent /. article about the younger generation thinking socialism was a good idea so the millennials could genuinely be naive, gullible fools.

It is more likely that their idea of what socialism is is way different from your idea of it.
Many socialist proponents look and the Scandinavian countries as a template while you probably look at Maoism or something similar.
Now you probably think "what they have in Scandinavia isn't socialism" but that is just you have to remember that according to the American conservatives anyone who wants to fund schools or healthcare is a socialist.

If you make sure to use the same definition of socialism all the time you will either find that you have plenty of examples of where socialism works better than the current US system or you will find that there aren't actually a lot of people supporting socialism.
If you change definition depending on your agenda, well of course things will look inconsistent.

Re:A trusting bunch

[Farmer Tim]

Never let it be said you can’t make money as an educator.

Re:A trusting bunch

[Daralantan]

I've heard a swede say he would rather not work

Randomly reminds me of when a friend of mine worked for Electrolux. He went to a new international center they were building over there to do some kind of engineering. He had a friend over there that quit the engineering job because "I'd rather be a bus driver, it's easier and I'd rather think less."

Not really related to your statement, just something I always found funny.

Re:A trusting bunch

[AmiMoJo]

Anecdotes aside Sweden consistently comes near the top for things like quality of life, education, healthcare, crime etc.

I'd imagine that if your friend had to live in, say, the UK long term they would realize how good Sweden has it.

Re:A trusting bunch

[Kiuas]

What once made Sweden great and wealthy was proper incentives for economic productivity and high trust between people. '

Bullshit.

The Nordic countries are all very wealthy (in the 25 in purchasing power adjusted GDP per capita, Sweden is 16th 5 places behind the US and one of the highest in Europe, and Norway is actually ahead of the US) and productive (with the exception of Iceland, all in the top 13 in terms of GDP per hours worked., with Denmark being pretty much equal to the US and Norway again being ahead of the US).

Then the socialists took over and for a while restrained themselves in milking the productive portion of the population dry.

Erm what? You do realize the exact opposite is true? Finland became independent after first 800 years of rule under the Swedish kingdom and then another 100+ years as an autonomous part of the Russian Empire in 1917 (we kinda slipped loose after the revolution happened, and had our own civil war in 1918 during which the communists that wanted us to join the then still emerging soviet union lost). A 100 years ago we were one of the poorest countries in Europe, with low overall education and literacy rates and a massive issue with poverty. We started the slow climb up and then the 2nd world war came. After the war and the rebuilding effort the foundations of the modern democratic socialism that combines a market economy with progressive taxation were laid out, copied from Sweden in large parts due to their successes there. The schools system was rehauled and unified, universities are tuition free, tax-funded health care etc. All of these are things that are now in our constitution. And what has happened? As already showcased we sprinted forwards to be among the top economies of Europe. Now does that mean that there are no issues and this is a perfect Utopia? No, absolutely not. The '08 crisis hit us here in Finland extremely hard because it also happened to coincide with the implosion of Nokia which was like almost a third of our export sector that basically disappeared, and we've spent the last decade recovering from that, and that's still an ongoing process, partially hampered by the fact that the current center-right (in Finnish terms, even the rightmost party here is to the left of the democratic mainstream in the US in their support for the existing universal systems) hasn't been very effective in tackling some of the structural issues, but nevertheless, we're still doing very well.

But to say that the socialists 'ruined everything' is just utter BS. Without the social policies that we've put in place, we'd likely still be a very backwater nation instead of a global first world economy,

Now the situation is so bad that I've heard a swede say he would rather not work because that would give tax money to his government that is ruining everything!

Oh so you heard 1 Swede say that did you? Well that proves the whole system is ruined then doesn't it? C'mon man.

Sweden took in a lot of refugees, way more than any other compared to the size of the population and that has obviously become a heated issue, as they have had problems with their immigration system previously as well. This has been made worse by the fact that Sweden changed its elementary school system away from the model they used to have (and that we still use) and allowed the creaton of privatized elementary schools, which has lead in parts of the large suburbs to rapid segregation creating schools for well-off natives and left the public schools in those areas to be heavily for immigrants. This obviously creates problems as it hampers those kids from learning the language for example, making integration and thus employment harder which creates a host of issues, the most prevalent of which is the rise of organized crime in those suburban are

Re:A trusting bunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, how dare a group of people think that, somehow, using their combined strengths to solve a problem would work. Don't they know they should just join the Republican party and that would salve everything? The Republicans are a giant group of people joined together....

Wait, sorry. Bad example.

I know! AMAC! That's not a huge group of people banding together to use their combined....

Wait. No. I'll get it.

OH! THe US Government. The US Government is a lone wolf. It's not like there are millions of people who...

Damn. This is hard.

Re:A trusting bunch

[Comrade Ogilvy]

100 years ago the basketball-americans that were a threat to the American way of life were Jews. In another 100 years, our present basketball-americans will be integrated just fine.

Re:A trusting bunch

[Daralantan]

I'd suspect that, but this was also a fairly new employee who had just started working recently in that same year. And just wanted to go back to being a bus driver.

They're not more likely to fall for scams

[rsilvergun]

It's right there in TFS. They use the internet more and so the ones likely to fall for scams are easier to reach. It's harder to get to boomers since they're not very connected. This'll change out to older folks getting scammed more once the generation that grew up with the Internet ages a bit.

Re: They're not more likely to fall for scams

[Wild_dog!]

until they get fearful and ignorant again and will once more fall for dumb tricks and blingy things.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[LynnwoodRooster]

Kickstarter is the scam. They get you to give money to someone else promising to deliver something that will probably never come to fruition, and they take a nice big cut of the action. So when it fails and you lose your money, you blame the other person, not them.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[jpaine619]

coddle
v. To cook in water just below the boiling point: coddle eggs.
v. To treat indulgently; baby.

I don't think you meant "cuddled"

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[Rockoon]

Has anyone compiled data on kickstarter "success rates" ?

I know there have been and are scams there, but I honestly dont have a grasp of the proportions.

Show me the data.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem with attributing things to an entirely group of people just because it is true for some individuals of that group; and then also taking credit for what others have done or blame people for what others have done.
Only a vanishingly small fraction of Boomers invented the integrated circuit. But technically they didn't even invent it, because the brains behind were generations before them. Just thing about it, if the first Boomer was born in 1940, could they have made the breakthrough in 1958? Was it 18 year old Boomers that knew things so well over all their older colleagues with experience? The internet tells me that it was Jack St. Clair Kilby who patented the process. He was born in 1923 - not a Boomer. Just because it happened during a time in which Boomers were still born does not mean they invented it. For example you also can't attribute what Elon Musk did and wants to do to Millenials, just because they were around when he did it. Musk himself is Gen-X.

Boomers however were extremely prominent in the Hippie movement. Communism, pacifism, anti science (although not anti intellectualism), free love, doing a ton of different drugs, and other such super moral things. You could call it a childlike view of the world.
Given the statistics Boomers would be far more likely to be one of these drug addicted Hippies than those who worked on making ICs a real thing.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[Opportunist]

I don't know a single Kickstarter project that is not a scam. Or at least a very poor form of "investment".

Funding a KS-Project is a high risk venture. One where you would expect an insane ROI for the simple reason that the chance of a sensible ROI is very low. Why do you think VCs usually take a sizable portion of your enterprise for the money they throw at you? We're talking about WAY more than 100% ROI. Usually by at least 2 orders of magnitude. Simply because they know that about one in ten or even just one in hundred projects they invest in will eventually pay off.

What do you get with Kickstarter? At best a "special edition" of the finished product. Are you fucking kidding me?

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[TheCastro1689]

I know it's AC but, I would imagine a donation drive would be the old person version of crowd funding. They'd understand the concept.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[Quirkz]

I don't know a single Kickstarter project that is not a scam.

Bard's Tale IV just launched last week. Brian Fargo's got enough experience in the industry he didn't seem like much of a risk (and that has been proved true). By paying early I got a game plus some extras, and more importantly for me paying early allowed the game to be made in the first place.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[suutar]

kickstarters aren't any kind of "investment" because you get no ownership stake.

As to scams, there's some, but I've contributed to a number of kickstarters and gotten exactly what I expected. It is, in many cases, essentially a way for someone to get a business loan at possibly reduced interest. Allow me to explain that.

Normally you get a business loan, use the funds for some process improvement, and you pay it back out of proceeds from sales of products produced with that process. With a typical kickstarter you sell the product first, use the proceeds for the process improvement, make the products, and send them. Both ways you're improving process and selling product to pay for it, just with kickstarter instead of a bank charging interest to cover their risk, you have a bunch of individuals who are just eating the risk. Many (most?) kickstarters have some form of bonus to incentivize the public to take the risk, but that cost to them is probably on par with what interest would have been.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[fazig]

Kickstarter itself does not check the feasibility of a project and of course opens the doors for scammers among everyone else.

From my own experiences with the platform I've only backed a couple of video games. Given the samples that I chose to back, every single one of them turned out fine so far. And it got me the product, that I would have bought anyway at a relatively low price. That's the way I see it, from the point of view of a consumer. It's an expense, not an investment.

Of course I know that this isn't the case for many other projects that launched on kickstarter. There, my common sense told me that their claims were too big for their evidence.
Or sometimes it's a bit more than common sense. I remember some kind of hover board technology (Back to the Future 2) which relied on some obscurity of electromagnetic interactions between electrons. If I remember correctly it was supposed to use charged plates that were also spinning, which should produce some thrusting forces that seemingly defied Newtonian physics.
Wading through the scientific basis of their work and the empirical evidence they've collected, I concluded that it is too risky to make that expense and or investment just yet.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[Dragonslicer]

I don't know a single Kickstarter project that is not a scam.

I've backed 3 Kickstarter projects (one video game, one small board game, and MST3K), and all of them delivered what they promised, though not always on the original schedule.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[Opportunist]

That "cost" to them is peanuts compared to a loan. Usually, what you get as a "backer" is some special edition version of the product, with some trinkets and goodies that are more or less free for the creator. I can see someone backing a project when he really, really, really wants what they promise to produce, because without your money it would not be built at all, but I can't really think of much that I'd want sooooo much ... at least nothing that can actually be produced.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[suutar]

For extras I was thinking of things like the kickstarter backer pin from when the Planet Mercenary kickstarter. Not used for anything else, so they got someone to do a run of something like 5k pins. At that order size, it probably cost about a buck a pin according to this site, so that's roughly $5k. There were other greeblies too (postcard, for example), but probably not enough to take it over 10k, so let's say it's a 5-10k range.

Total funding through the kickstarter was about 350k. This site seems to indicate that the average rate for small business loans was about 6%. The kickstarter launched in april 2015 and the final update was emailed 12/29/17 so that's about 20 months. Loan calculator says that 350k at 6% for 1.7 years is 18090/mo, which totals to 361800, for a total of 11800 in interest.

So certainly the extras were less than interest, but I don't think I'd call it peanuts or "more or less free". A set with more electronic extras, or where the extras are more of something that matches the base item, to hold down extra-only production costs, is probably closer, but still not likely to be ignorable.

Re:They're not more likely to fall for scams

[drewlake2000]

I quite fancy some cuddled eggs though...

Sheltered

[MikeRT]

Millennials are also the first generation where bullshit like "I should be able to walk down the street naked and have nothing happen to me" is considered neither a joke nor a statement of "why yes, I am bat shit crazy, just wanted to get that out there while breaking the ice." Or girls just leaving their apartments unlocked and then wondering why they had problems with creeps.

I'm an older Millennial, and I grew up in smaller towns in the South. When I went to college, I actually heard garbage like that from other Millennials. Coming from a law enforcement family in small southern towns, I was stunned at how so many of the middle and upper class Millennials acted like they were born last night in a cabbage patch.

I mean, fuck me, if I had said "I should be able to walk anywhere at 2AM covered in bling and not be hurt" my dad would have looked outside and said "oh I'm sorry, did I miss the news cast where Jesus returned in triumph and put all of the evil in the world into Hell? No? Then use your damn head."

Re:Sheltered

[jwhyche]

This is something that I have also observed with a lot of millennials. Most of them have the works they way they think it should, and now how it actually works. In the ideal millennial world you should be able to walk down the street naked at 2 am. They just don't take in to account there are fucking evil people out there that will happily take advantage of them.

It is not that millennials are stupid, it just they are not getting the same life experiences any more that most of us non-milennials got.

Re:Sheltered

[Anonymous Coward]

In terms of brain compute power, millennials might not be more stupid than other generations, but in terms of critical thinking skills they are beyond hopeless. Unfortunately, critical thinking skills are what stops people from being scammed, from being deceived, from falling for authoritarianism, and of course from being a special snowflake--and millennials are abysmal at all of that.

Re:Sheltered

[110010001000]

No we shouldn't. I don't want to see you naked and it is illegal to do that.

Re:Sheltered

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true; in my day, when I walked down the street naked at 2 am I consistently got a savage beatdown. Looking back, I'm honestly grateful to my assailants; how the heck else could I have learned?

Re:Sheltered

[Actually, I do RTFA]

You should be able to leave your apartment unlocked/walk down the street naked and not have an issue. You of course won't. But that doesn't excuse the actual people who take advantage of them.

And, year-by-year, we get closer to that ideal world. So, you know, it's improving.

Re:Sheltered

[grep -v '.*' *]

In the ideal millennial world you should be able to walk down the street naked at 2 am.

"The world should be my safe space." -- woke millennials.

Yeah, good luck with that. Come back when you're a little more worldly and educiatized.

Re:Sheltered

[Aighearach]

Uh, but FEMEN activists get arrested all the time?

Re:Sheltered

[gweihir]

It is not that millennials are stupid, it just they are not getting the same life experiences any more that most of us non-milennials got.

They are getting it. But far too late, when the harm is a lot larger than what it would have been at the age they should have been getting it. Stupid. Protecting your children like that harms them.

Re:Sheltered

[gweihir]

Might get even shot by the police, you know because you tried to assault them visually with your nude looks.

Re:Sheltered

[gweihir]

Indeed. In a recent art performance somewhere in Europe, all that happened was that the police came to check whether woman doing it was all right and not confused or something. That assured, they left again and no harm done.

Re:Sheltered

[AvitarX]

So you believe that one should be attacked for walking down the street naked ?

Obviously it's not safe behavior, bit why do you think it shouldn't be?

Re:Sheltered

[bickerdyke]

That's either in countries where any form of protest is already illegal or in countries where trespassing is stil illegal in the buff.

Re:Sheltered

[thegarbz]

As someone who never locks my front door, whose girlfriend walks home just fine at 3am through an unlit park, maybe the fact that millennials are not getting the "experiences" you got is because the world around you has improved.

Re:Sheltered

[AmiMoJo]

The same is said of every generation. Were hippies and flower power any less ridiculed?

Young people, by virtue of having been alive for less time, are less experienced. Some would say less cynical and worn down. It will always be that way.

Re:Sheltered

[Opportunist]

Well, have you looked at them? Them naked is a crime against nature AND good taste.

Re:Sheltered

[Opportunist]

Try that as a man and you get arrested for indecent exposure.

Equal rights, my ass...

Re:Sheltered

[Opportunist]

Well, experience is information you get after you needed it.

Re:Sheltered

[jittles]

Millennials are also the first generation where bullshit like "I should be able to walk down the street naked and have nothing happen to me" is considered neither a joke nor a statement of "why yes, I am bat shit crazy, just wanted to get that out there while breaking the ice."

I live in the middle of a big city and I do feel this way. But of course the fact that I am bigger than most people out there and am usually walking down the street with a 90 pound dog probably help me feel like I am not going to get hassled. But it's not something I would recommend to any of my friends or family.

Re:Sheltered

[AmiMoJo]

Reminds me of Star Trek, particular Next Generation. Obviously the product of the boomer generation, and they had entire planets where people could walk around practically naked (it was TV after all) without worry. Seems like an admirable goal really, a society with that little crime.

The whole Federation was pretty much that way.

Re:Sheltered

[gweihir]

Not necessarily, but the risk is certainly higher. You have a point.

Re:Sheltered

[mjwx]

Millennials are also the first generation where bullshit like "I should be able to walk down the street naked and have nothing happen to me" is considered neither a joke nor a statement of "why yes, I am bat shit crazy, just wanted to get that out there while breaking the ice." Or girls just leaving their apartments unlocked and then wondering why they had problems with creeps.

No, they aren't. Young people being a bit naive is nothing new... The fact is young people just lack the experience we take for granted. I'm a gen-xer... Which makes me older than you. You were once the naive young fool you think all young people people are.

Wisdom comes with age and experience, your kind of thinking is when you gain years, but retard experience.

Of all your examples, there were young people of my generation doing it, there were young people of my parents generation... Remember the 60's... Of course you don't but they weren't much different. Cars were crappier, petrol was a bit cheaper and it had lead in it but we're not fundamentally different as humans.

Re:Sheltered

[Zocalo]

So much this. This is just another part of what happens when parents wrap their precious snowflakes up in cotton wool and bubblewrap and only allow them to frequent "safe spaces" instead of letting them start to figure things out for themselves, including all the accompanying cuts and bruises to body and ego, and building up their self-confidence and life skills in a controlled manner. No matter how much we'd prefer it to be otherwise, life can - and does - suck from time to time, and other people can be - and are - assholes from time to time, so the sooner kids start to realise that and begin acquiring the tools they'll need to deal with it the better.

It's called "parenting" folks, and remember - how you treat your own kids will often be returned in kind when your looking to retire and rely on them for support, so best make a good job of it. If, on the otherhand, you're looking for an almost guaranteed path to a 20- or 30-something fuckup, then denying them that gradual learning curve throughout their adolescence and just shoving them off the deep end when it's time to leave home for college, career, or jail, sure seems like a great way to do it.

Re:Sheltered

[scamper_22]

Hopefully this conversation stays in these bounds. But I really like how Jordan Peterson puts it in his Maps of Meaning Havard lectures. I'll paraphrase it.

"Your culture protects you and allows you to operate within those bounds. Remove the protections of that culture, and you don't know who you'd be"

I grew up in Africa. I'm of Indian background. Life was far more dangerous. I wasn't protected. I did ignore/not help someone who looked injured on the side of the road. It could be a scam to rob/hurt me. I did avoid certain people/areas about of pure fear of what can happen. Mainly because I personally knew people who had really bad things happen to them... and had some happen to me. I obeyed a lot of rules to keep my self safe... never wear jewelry in public. Don't display any sign of wealth...

I now live in Canada with ample protection. To the point where here, I'm seen as the altruistic brave person. I was on the subway a while back and a thuggish person had fallen asleep/or drunk at the end of the line. Everyone was too scared to wake him up. To me, it was just easy. I had literally no fear of this 'Canadian thug'. I woke em up, got thanked by the other people on the subway...

The point here is not to pump me up, but to put it in perspective. These people who had so much fear, they couldn't wake up a sleeping thug on the subway in Toronto were really no different than me back in Africa. It's just a matter of perspective. I had seen 'real' danger and 'real' random violence. I am not risking that. For whatever reason, the culture in Canada has largely protected me. I don't really have that random violence fear. Canada is not utopia people, violence and gangs and murders happen here, but generally if you mind your business, people don't bother you. At least that is how I've felt in Canadian culture. It never crossed my mind once that the sleeping thug would have any reason to attack me.

On the one hand, these millennials seem naive. They've been raised in a culture that tells them what their rights are and about the goodness of people. By in large you can go through the first 25 years of life living very well protected by that culture. You'll probably get to see more goodness in people than I would. Take a step back for a second. Why should they not expect to walk down the street naked at 3 am? Because danger you say? Any less danger than me just walking down the street. Because when I was an Africa I literally had the fear just walking down various street in places I had to go. Yet, we've managed to create a culture in North America where in general, you can walk around without general fear.

Why can't we create a culture where it is safe to walk around naked at 3 am in general?

I of course have my doubts and my mind is much more like yours in terms of safety, but I also can't help but see so much of it is just culture. I can tell you for sure that the millennial guys for example are much kinder and more tame than the guys when I went to school with and much much much more tame than the guys in Africa. I've never been to Sweden so maybe this is a gross naive stereotype, but let's imagine sweden without immigration for a second. Everyone there educated and protected by Swedish culture for generations. Would you think it strange to think a Swedish person could walk out at 3 am naked and have the general expectation to be safe? Doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

Of course this leads to a huge mismatch if you ever encounter people outside the protected millennial culture, but it is interesting nonetheless. But I see that as far less a problem, given we all take the protection of our culture for granted. We all appear from the cabbage patch from a different perspective.

Re:Sheltered

[h4x0t]

You folks need to understand what the word 'should' means.
Just because one says they should be able to do something (given a series of ideals), does not fucking mean they do it daily and fail to understand the consequences or drivers.

Re:Sheltered

[misexistentialist]

Should you? In a utopia where no one wants to steal is that because of total police surveillance, because homes only contain junk bought on credit from Amazon not worth stealing, because thieves are all dead from drug overdoes, or because AI forces everyone to generate views for YouTube videos and won't let them outside.

Re:Sheltered

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Alternatively, it could be a post-scarcity world, it's a world with little enough crime that cops can solve crimes after the fact with forensic evidence, it's a world where drug-addicts get treatment and don't need to steal to fuel their addiction, it's a world where everyone has a good job. Look, there are always some dipshits, but most crime is desperation. If we can remove that, we remove a lot of crime. If we remove enough crime, cops can start solving burglaries.

Re:Sheltered

[jwhyche]

The same is said of every generation. Were hippies and flower power any less ridiculed? Young people, by virtue of having been alive for less time, are less experienced. Some would say less cynical and worn down. It will always be that way.

Not like this generation. Hippies, despite all the shit I give them, had enough basic life skills when they started out. When I came out of high school, at the age of 18, I knew how to create a budget, balance a checkbook, type, cook a basic meal, buy and maintain a car, look for, apply for, and get a job. Any many other basic skills.

I've met Millennials, in college, that can't even do basic math with out a calculator. I'm not talking algebra here, but addition and subtraction. Some of them are almost hopeless. I can't get my daughters husband to even consider making a budget, much less managing his money correctly. They are amazed that I can look down a receipt and add up all the totals on it in my head.

Most of the hippies that I know at that time where inclined to learn. This generation doesn't seem to be inclined to do even that. They are not stupid, they just seem to be, I don't really know what to call it.

Re:Sheltered

[jeff4747]

Not like this generation. Hippies, despite all the shit I give them, had enough basic life skills when they started out. When I came out of high school, at the age of 18, I knew how to create a budget, balance a checkbook, type, cook a basic meal, buy and maintain a car, look for, apply for, and get a job. Any many other basic skills.

And then your generation voted to gut school funding and tie it to standardized tests that do not involve any "basic life skills". And you are apparently surprised by the results of your votes.

Re:Sheltered

[Cro Magnon]

It's true; in my day, when I walked down the street naked at 2 am I consistently got a savage beatdown. Looking back, I'm honestly grateful to my assailants; how the heck else could I have learned?

I didn't have that problem. When I walked down the street naked, people fled in terror, fainted, or threw up in the street.

Re: Sheltered

[TimMD909]

Pointing out someone left him or herself wide open to trouble is what they call 'victim blaming.' Apparently helping people avoid being a victim is not cool anymore, which I'm sure you found out.

Re:Sheltered

[jwhyche]

Not exactly surprised. I remember when we started down this path when I was first enrolling my kids in school. I looked over the curriculum and recall that I didn't see any of the stuff I had in school. I seem to recall teachers saying that the new stuff would lead to a generation not being prepared.

Of course this didn't stop Bush Beta and his band of merry idiots from rubber stamping it. Then it got worse under Obama. Now we have a willy wonka escapee at the helm and I don't see anything getting better. I do think Trump is doing good job in some areas but the areas he is failing in he seems to be doing in style.

Re:Sheltered

[Aighearach]

Right, and those countries are in Europe.

Re:Sheltered

[j-beda]

Kavanaugh is that you? Yeah I mean the expectation of living in a society without rapists thieves and creeps is horrible. It was totally her fault she got assaulted.

oh to have mod points! funny or insightful?

Re:Sheltered

[j-beda]

Where are my "insightful" mod points when i need them?

Re:Sheltered

[bickerdyke]

Where trespassing is illegal.

Re:Sheltered

[Aighearach]

And yet.

Of Course

[NicknameUnavailable]

The scammers are rarely the scammed.

"Young adults heading off to college"

[Kargan]

...are not millennials.

They are Generation Z-ers.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/0...

Lack of critical thinking

[Spy Handler]

no surprise, given how public schools these days do little besides indoctrinate kids in leftist ideology. Chairman Mao would feel right at home.

Re:Lack of critical thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, young people historically were always so wary and worldly-wise.

dear god, is there nothing you won't turn into a cheap (and content-free) political jab?

Re:Lack of critical thinking

[jpaine619]

He's absolutely right though.. There is indoctrination happening... When I was much younger, there was NOT this level of politics in school.. I couldn't tell you if a given teacher was a Democrat or a Republican or a fucking Communist because they didn't tell you, they didn't push an ideology... They taught you how to read, write, and do 'rythmatic..

At best you could make an educated guess from how they dressed (business like or hippy) but that was about it..

Now? Yeah, it's way different..

Re:Lack of critical thinking

[PhrostyMcByte]

That's interesting, and seems kind of ridiculous but I don't have kids. What have yours experienced?

Re:Lack of critical thinking

[AmiMoJo]

When I was at school there was plenty of indoctrination. Mainly religious, so I guess things have changed a little.

Re:Lack of critical thinking

[houghi]

The thing is that lack of critical think has absolutely nothing to do with left or right. There are plenty of excamples where the left does not think and people are indoctrinated. There are equally plenty of indoctrinated kids to the right.

No only Chairman Mao would be proud, Adolf Hitler would be as well. Just as plenty other "leaders".

Re:Lack of critical thinking

[Opportunist]

Leftist ideology? Is that why bullshit like "creationism" is getting pushed into schoolbooks these days?

Re: Lack of critical thinking

[Jahoda]

If you think "chariman Mao" would be "envious" of "leftist indoctrination" in American public schools then you're a fucking idiot who clearly is a product of one.

Re:Lack of critical thinking

[h4x0t]

Where is this comment coming from?
Wishing geometry was replaced with numerology?

Re:Lack of critical thinking

[Ichijo]

What do conservatives think we should do about our socialized roads?

Are you off your meds again?

[rsilvergun]

my kid's economics class was less economics and more like a cheer squad for Adam Smith. There was no discussion of socialism, Keynesian economics or anything else besides how supply and demand made the world great.

You're right about Mao though. But he was a fascist, not a communist and certainly not a Democratic Socialist.

Re:Are you off your meds again?

[jpaine619]

You're right about Mao though. But he was a fascist, not a communist and certainly not a Democratic Socialist.

Fuck yeah! Haven't gotten to see the No-True-Scotsman fallacy in a long time. Thank you! (seriously).

Mao said he was communist, he ran a communist country, his successors are communists.. But no.. he was a fascist, because you know better...

Thanks man.. I really needed that laugh, for real.

Re:Are you off your meds again?

[houghi]

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has the same isssue where people do not believe that they are a democracy.

Also: the political spectrum is not a line.

Re:Are you off your meds again?

[Attila Dimedici]

Well, its not like there is much difference between communists and fascists. They both think that individual liberty must be sacrificed for the good of the collective. The only difference really is how they define the collective.

Re: Are you off your meds again?

[Brujis]

They had removed private control of the means of production and as such were, by definition, Socialist. My great grandparents were murdered by those German Socialist assholes so I know how evil Socialism is. Now go take your 'no true Scotsman fallacy' and shove it where the some doesn't shine.

Re:Are you off your meds again?

[nagora]

You're right about Mao though. But he was a fascist, not a communist and certainly not a Democratic Socialist.

Fuck yeah! Haven't gotten to see the No-True-Scotsman fallacy in a long time. Thank you! (seriously).

Mao said he was communist, he ran a communist country, his successors are communists.. But no.. he was a fascist, because you know better...

Well, yes. Mao could say anything he wanted to because he was a fascist dictator.

If someone who had never been to Scotland, while living in Germany descended from Indian parents called themselves a Scotsman I'd probably say they were wrong too.

But, hey, you know better, Humpty.

Re:Are you off your meds again?

[jpaine619]

If someone who had never been to Scotland, while living in Germany descended from Indian parents called themselves a Scotsman I'd probably say they were wrong too.

If someone can declare themselves to be a woman, while in possession of X and Y chromosomes, then an Indian living in Germany can call himself a Scotsman.

To any liberals reading this: Yes... This is how dumb your gender argument sounds.

WTF?!?!?

[sootman]

Seriously? Comparing millennials (born mid-80s to early-90s, currently around 20-30 years old) to boomers (born mid-40s to ~1960, currently in their 60s and 70s)? They're more likely to fall for scams BECAUSE THEY'RE YOUNGER AND HAVE LESS EXPERIENCE. There may be more vectors for them to be scammed these days, but I don't think they're any more or less gullible than boomers were *at that same age*.

Also, didn't slashdot used to warn us about (or better yet, not link to) sites with autoplaying video?

Re:WTF?!?!?

[93 Escort Wagon]

... boomers (born mid-40s to ~1960, currently in their 60s and 70s) ...

Growing up as a Boomer, we were taught that it ran from 1946 to 1964. The peak year for births in the baby boom was 1961, with second place going to 1960.

I notice that Wikipedia redefines it using births per 1000, which seems a bit problematic when you’re introducing a large number of babies during a relatively short time - so the population is skewing younger fairly rapidly over the hat period.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[AvitarX]

And a smart person with a bad upbringing will learn to not get scammed because of life.

So for any birth year, the number of people from that birth year that are easy targets declines every year.

Or are saying that every Boomer has an excellent upbringing and none learned from life?

Re:WTF?!?!?

[Rockoon]

This is a generation that thinks that going out of their way to declare to all their virtue sounds forthright. The last thing it sounds like is forthright to me, and I'm squarely gen-X. It sounds like bullshit. It sounds like they are selling something... peddling a story... spinning yarn my grandparents would have said.

But the fact is that THEY DO think that it sounds forthright and that I DO NOT think so. This divergence is the fault of the federalization of the education system in 1979. The beginning of the marginalization of parental control over the education of their children. Theres a pile of federal dollars on the table. Whats a schoolboard to do.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[thegarbz]

Bullshit. A smart 13 year old can spot a scam. The problem is not age but upbringing.

No, smart has nothing to do with it. An experienced person regardless of age can spot a scam. But you're absolutely right, it's all the Boomer's fault :-)

Re:WTF?!?!?

[gweihir]

I tend to think of a "bad upbringing" in this context as one that does not prepare you for life. Of course other forms of "bad" are possible in other contexts.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, the title should say "Young people more likely to fall for scams than old people". But then a story with that title would never make it to front page.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Comparing millennials (born mid-80s to early-90s, currently around 20-30 years old) to boomers (born mid-40s to ~1960, currently in their 60s and 70s)? They're more likely to fall for scams BECAUSE THEY'RE YOUNGER AND HAVE LESS EXPERIENCE.

Speaking as someone who has a mother in her late 70's ... just older than the Boomers because she was born pre-WWII ... when my parents got their first computer about 10 years ago or so, I sat them down and tried to explain just how paranoid they needed to be. Not just with the internet, but phone calls, and door to door people.

The problem these days is the literal level of paranoia and distrust you need to have to navigate these things and not get scammed would have been a clinical disorder only just 25 years ago.

My coaching has served my mother well, but I'm not sure that it's natural for most people to assume everyone who calls them, emails them, or comes to their door is a lying asshole until proven otherwise.

The sad reality is, more often that not these days, those people are lying assholes ... I'd say easily 95% of all my incoming calls are fraudulent, and I've pretty much concluded that 100% of door to door salespeople are also cons, or at least very shady and not to be trusted.

Honestly, while they're teaching "stranger danger" or whatever in school, they should be teaching kids to be looking out for themselves and they can't go around like some rube fresh off the turnip wagon.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[cascadingstylesheet]

Seriously? Comparing millennials (born mid-80s to early-90s, currently around 20-30 years old) to boomers (born mid-40s to ~1960, currently in their 60s and 70s)? They're more likely to fall for scams BECAUSE THEY'RE YOUNGER AND HAVE LESS EXPERIENCE. There may be more vectors for them to be scammed these days, but I don't think they're any more or less gullible than boomers were *at that same age*.

Also, didn't slashdot used to warn us about (or better yet, not link to) sites with autoplaying video?

It's actually interesting because the current cultural idea is that it's mainly the oldsters falling for scams, and that the youngsters are so much more sophisticated, etc.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[AvitarX]

Yeah, I did too.

I didn't mean because they'll go to the shoot of hard knocks.

My point was simply that a smart 13 year old can be taught avoid scams, but no matter the upbringing, by 60, that skill will exist.

Young people need to rely on their upbringing to avoid scams, old people don't. So the older cohort will always have an edge.

Without being able to check the scam success rate on today's 60 year olds in the 70s, we'll never be able to compare. We could track today's youth though and try to quantity how scammability shifts with age.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[jeff4747]

The article also starts Millennials at 1973, resulting in an even more lopsided grouping of people.....and apparent GenX doesn't exist again.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[gweihir]

I see what you mean.

Although there is a large scam wave here in Europe that specifically targets retired people. So I am not sure about that life-experience necessarily accumulating simply by existing. Could also be that those over 65 or so just do not have enough experience with the Internet.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[AvitarX]

I bet different scams work better on different people.

What I'd like to see, is now that we have a (presumably) good study that represent today's youth and older people, it'd be cool to do a follow up every decade and see if the numbers change, also see if people's susceptibility to type (new vs old tech) change with age (as in old tech hits youth more, but new tech hits elderly).

Presumably it would be money well spent even since the results could be used to improve training and PSA style spending, and reduce total fraud with less spending.

We picture the elderly as the primary targets and victims (we being you (based on your comment) and I), but maybe that's simply prejudice. Maybe the reality is that Youth are actually the ones primarily being victimized AND that educating them better will by virtue lead to a better educated elderly population in the long run. Campaign to educate the elderly could actually be wasted money with minimal impact.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[gweihir]

I agree that it would be nice to have some hard data here from a long-term study.

Re:WTF?!?!?

[GuB-42]

It's actually interesting because the current cultural idea is that it's mainly the oldsters falling for scams, and that the youngsters are so much more sophisticated, etc.

I think the kind of scam oldster and youngsters fall into are different.
Oldsters are more likely to respond to things like price gouging. Sell them a TV for $1000 when it is worth $100. Scammers play on the fact that the old people are tired, have a hard time thinking clearly, and just let go.
Youngsters are more likely to fall for classic scams. The basis of classic scams is to let the victims feel like they are in charge. They play on their ambitions, lack of experience, and dishonesty.

Shouldn't be an issue

[reiterate]

We don't have any money anyway

I've generally heard that in Japan

[rsilvergun]

you could send your daughter down the street naked with a ¥10,000 yen bill taped to her and expect her to be fine. Jokes aside the reason they have so many vending machines is they don't have much vandalism. Europe's generally a lot better than the US in that regard. And people crack jokes about how nice and polite Canada is.

I guess what I'm saying is that the US seems to have a reputation for being a nasty place. That said, crime's been dropping non-stop for decades. What hasn't been dropping is politicians using "tough on crime" rhetoric to get elected while screwing their constituents...

Re:I've generally heard that in Japan

[mentil]

Even if crime's dropping, that doesn't mean there are fewer assholes. Furthermore, an easy way to get crime to seem to drop is to discourage reporting, e.g. "don't bother reporting if your smartphone was stolen". Distrust of police also leads to fewer police reports.

Re:I've generally heard that in Japan

[AvitarX]

I've lived in West Philly, and I love in Wilmington Delaware now.

Crime in Philly has indeed dropped, Wilmington I wouldn't necessarily bet on for the last decade anyway.

Just my feelings in the rougher spots though, don't have real stats.

Gen-X wins

[OrangeTide]

I've protected myself in a thick scratchy blanket of cynicism.

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[OrangeTide]

Gen-X here. Nobody ever gave a shit about us, not even other gen-x'ers.

Older is wiser? I'm shocked!

[Tony Isaac]

So the school of hard knocks teaches life skills? Wow!

When Baby Boomers were young, they were stupid too.

Re:Older is wiser? I'm shocked!

[MrMr]

I think this happened on a much larger scale than just for the last generation. I've noticed that I'm way 'younger' in many ways than my parents were at the same age, and they were nowhere near as 'old' as my grandparents were at my current age. I guess the trend could be caused by the decline of life-threathening problems you encouter in your life-time.

Re:Older is wiser? I'm shocked!

[jeff4747]

Millennials have been brought up in environments which were overly protective, and that produces people who are weak and lacking in understanding of how the world works.

Psssst.....you made that environment. You were the adults, they were the kids. Participation trophies? You were the parents creating them and handing them out.

So time to actually take responsibility for the world you created and help us clean it up....oh wait, your'e a Boomer. We'll have to clean it up after you die because you can't take responsibility for anything your generation does.

Re:Older is wiser? I'm shocked!

[j-beda]

burn!

The thing that hath been

[0100010001010011]

“The thing that hath been,
it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.”

This is the same crowd (35-45) that fell for "Sign up for a credit card, get this free T-Shirt" during the first days of college.

Some people weren't taught how credit works. I graduated in 2006, sometime before I graduated the campus rules changed and suddenly all the credit card companies were gone. I knew people with 5 T-shirts through 5 different creditcard companies. "It's free, who cares".

The same people that buy micro-transactions to play a "free" game.

Re:The thing that hath been

[Opportunist]

I don't know what's more entertaining to watch, people who use one credit card to pay off another, or those that think that "paying" with your credit card is free money because you already paid with the credit card and that's it, no need to pay that off.

Re: The thing that hath been

[peragrin]

I don't disagree with you but I think reward points are an even better scam.

Sure I will give you $0.005 on the dollar and let you reward yourself with spending money.

So when credit card company took the full amount out of checking instead of that months payment, I took the chance cashed in all my reward points, and dropped the card. Switched it to a cash back without a program (a fixed rate) canceled my secondary card, and am in a much better option.

Re:The thing that hath been

[desdinova 216]

No.people are all just a bunch of morons. Get lost.

ftfa

Re: The thing that hath been

[0100010001010011]

https://www.reddit.com/r/churn...

People do this near professionally. Sign up for $500 if you spend $1k in 90 days. Use that $1k with 0% transfer to pay off another card that you did the same thing with. Rinse. Repeat.

Sounds Legit

[AdamStarks]

I buy it

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[CustomSolvers2]

We are so exceptional that there aren't even generic labels defining us. It seems like a good thing: a ridiculous prejudice less to give a shit about! :)

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[Opportunist]

So what, I don't care.

Re:Comes from over-protective parents and society

[gweihir]

Fully agree on that.

The problem starts with the parents

[Opportunist]

Without fail, when I meet such a special snowflake millennial (they're not all like that, by far not, mind you), you will soon after meet their helicopter parents. Who keep these kids under a cheese cover 'til they're 18, and usually much longer than that, keeping reality away from them while reinforcing their belief that they are god's gift to the world.

What else do you expect to come out of that as soon as these completely unprepared people are dropped into reality?

Re:Millenials- AMIRITE

[Opportunist]

Slashdot, like the rest of the world, is moving towards extremes. With the moderates and other sane people pretty much playing the role of the UN soldiers in the Gaza strip and getting shelled by both sides for being "for the enemy".

Sooner or later the sane ones simply withdraw, fed up with the whole bullshit, and what's left is two extremes. Who of course claim that the world is overrun by the respective other extreme because they drank so much of their own kool-aid that they think their position is the normal one.

Many fell for a scam before they went to Uni

[Chrisq]

Many fell for a scam before they went. Taking a loan to get a degree in some subject that won't add in any way to either their earnings potential or enjoyment of their work.

Re:"Educated" by liberals. Whos shocked?

[Opportunist]

Well, on the other hand you have the dimwit old farts that never got out of the US, never saw what a hellhole their country actually is (unless you're rich and able to buy your way out of the dump) but still consider it the greatest thing since sliced bread.

There's dumb fucks on both ends of the age spectrum.

Re:Debt should be an issue

[Opportunist]

Well, while true in theory, just TRY to lend a dollar as a millennial without a dollar to your name.

Raised from birth

[SCVonSteroids]

To think we're special and that we'll get ours eventually without putting in half the work our parents did. It's not a wonder that when "Too good to be true" things come our way that most tend to jump on them.

40-year-olds being "vulnerable"...

[v1]

The article talks about people under 45 being "vulnerable". Sorry, if you're in your 30s-40s (or even really mid 20s) and are still "vulnerable" to scams, your parents have failed spectacularly in preparing you for life in the real world. Perhaps it's just a form of natural selection at work. Parents that fail to educate their kids deseve a little penalty to their gene pool.

This just in....

[DaveV1.0]

People are stupid. Film at 11

Population Statistics?

[eagle52997]

I find these claims spurious. One need only look at population statistics to see that in 2010 the percentage of the population that was under age 45 was about 66%. https://www.census.gov/prod/ce... Since the boomers have been dying off, that has more than likely approached the 69% figure in the paper over the past 8 years. Nowhere in the article do they reference the current population distribution. So 69% of the population is under 45 and 69% of scam victims are under 45. To me that says you can't use age as a predictor for who is likely to fall for scams.

I don't see that

[Revek]

I have had no less then a dozen calls in the last month from boomers who let someone access their desktop and locked it demanding money to unlock it. I arrived at one location where the scam was still ongoing. I promptly unplugged the ethernet on the computer and when the guy on the other end said I lost connection the lady made me reconnect and wouldn't listen to my explanation that she was going to get ripped off. I left and two days later she calls in to complain that her computer needed a password and they wanted four hundred bucks to give it to her. Since we sell them internet they think we are responsible. We get calls from our older phone customers complaining about all the scam calls they get everyday but the insist on answering and talking to them. So no I don't believe that millennial's are less savvy than boomers.

You know people can lie right?

[rsilvergun]

that Lionel Hutz is not, in fact, a lawyer?

Mao said he was a communist but did not run a communist country. He took complete control and ownership of all property in the country. That's the opposite of communism; where the proles are meant to have ownership and control via a Democratic process.

This was the cause of most of the deaths. Mao insisted they double plant, everybody knew that was a horrifying idea but couldn't override Mao because rather than being a communist country it was a fascist dictatorship. The double planting lead to a horrifically bad harvest and mass starvation. There are other examples of how bad Mao's economic ideas were. Everybody knew they were terrible too, but they were too frightened of Mao to say anything (or if they did they disappeared).

Bottom line: Words have meaning and can be misused for propaganda purposes. To suggest otherwise in the face of such obvious evidence is ignorant at best and dishonest propaganda at worst.

Re:You know people can lie right?

[jpaine619]

Mao said he was a communist but did not run a communist country. He took complete control and ownership of all property in the country. That's the opposite of communism; where the proles are meant to have ownership and control via a Democratic process.

Okay.. Communists take control of private property.. 100% of communist countries have done that. (Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Yugoslavia, etc..)

Fascists don't... (German, Italy, Spain).

It doesn't matter what the theory is, it matters what the application is.

Both ideologies have centralized planning to a degree, but the implementation is vastly different.

Percentages can mislead

[kubajz]

69% of victims are under 45? Just wait for my research that shows the amazing blessings of high age in avoiding email scams - less than 1% of victims are over 90!

...and what about...

[Not-a-Neg]

What about when Baby Boomers were the age of current Millennials? I know I fell for a credit related scam when I was in college 20+ years ago. Did credit cards even exist when Baby Boomers were that age?

More like to fall for the same scam?

[h4x0t]

This article links to an info graphic.
The info graphic just says that '69% of victims are under 45'. 58% of people in the US are under 45, so one could construe this to mean that millennials are gullible, but that is a stretch. 'Millennials' are a subset of people under 45. Babies are under 45 and they are gullible as fuck. No attempt was made to assess how many scams are encountered, nor the rate at which they are rebuffed, let alone any attempt to show some kind of apples to apples scam comparison.

Re:Gen-X is sucks. It really is the worst generati

[jeff4747]

Like Millennials, we did our activism when we were younger.

The fact that you don't know about it kinda indicates the power dynamic of a much smaller generation versus two larger generations.

We needed a study, for this?

[p51d007]

The 20-40 somethings I run into can't keep their heads out of their phones for 30 seconds. Heck, you go into a convenience store, fast food restaurant, or multiple other businesses when it isn't super busy, you have to wait for them to put down the phone, before they will wait on you. Not only that, a LOT of them I run into on a high school or college campus, can't speak in clear English, without contractions, or slang. I won't even get into asking them questions about math, history and the like, or writing something in cursive to see if they can read it.

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[Cajun Hell]

We are so exceptional that there aren't even generic labels defining us.

What could be more generic than X?

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[CustomSolvers2]

What could be more generic than X?

Touché.

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[rahvin112]

That's not true, in the 90's they called us all a bunch of lazy shiftless flannel wearing losers who would amount to nothing.

I remember years of news articles and tv shows about how GenX was going to be the end of America. Kinda like how they treat Millennial today.

Honestly is anyone surprised that age leads to wisdom about scams? If that was the real title of the article then people would roll their eyes and move on but they through in the millennial tag to draw eyeballs and everyone, particularly the baby boomers jumped in to gloat like the losers they are.

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[OrangeTide]

Every cohort is called lazy and selfish when they are 15-25. Gen-X have earned, rightly or wrongly, a reputation for being cynical and not as politically active as Baby Boomers once were.

But these broad generalizations are more amusing than useful.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

— Socrates

Kids these days! ... and I guess also kids in 5th century BC Greece.

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[rahvin112]

Gen-X is just as politically active, the problem is Gen-X is about 1/3rd the size of a normal generation so the votes don't count for much as the boomers can dominate our voting. Our advantage comes with the Millenials, who are just and cynical and family oriented.

I'd argue Gen-X and millennial differ very little political and life views on the whole and Millenials outnumber both Boomers and Gen-X combined. Each year as more and more of Millenials reach the age when they start voting regularly they are beginning to shape the electorate away from the Boomer dominated system of stupidity.

Um, millenials are old people

[WillAffleckUW]

Seriously, they're like 26 to 36 now.

College?

Re:No sure this is true.

[ahodgson]

You will too when you grow up and start paying real taxes.

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[rahvin112]

I'd agree we are a bit more materialistic, but not much more than's reasonable for a change in generation.

Most Millennial's got stuck with an economy and an education funding system that basically screwed them over far worse than any prior generation. Most are simply not in a financial position to buy homes, but if they were I believe they would, it's simply that they cannot due to debt loads. I think they will be more accepting of college like situations (renting, sharing housing, etc) after graduation than prior generations because they don't have the financial resources to curb those behaviors.

I think the Millennials will actually be good leaders and political stewards in the same way the "greatest generation' was after having experienced the great depression. Millennials were hit the hardest of any group during the great recessions and those lessons and impacts will be long lasting.

Really?!?

[Locke2005]

Who voted for president Toad Dick, boomers or millenials?

Re:new voters

[Locke2005]

How many 18-year olds voted for Trump?

Just look at warming.

[rs79]

More people believe in angels (46%) than warming (34%).

That's what you get for skipping stats to go out and get a smoke.

Don't know enough about Cuba & Yugoslavia

[rsilvergun]

but the USSR and China were not, are not, never have been and probably never will be anything that even remotely resembles communism. They were fascist dictatorships that borrowed Carl Marx's rhetoric. Calling them communist is like calling Jerry Fallwell a Devote Christian. It's so obviously a lie on the face of it as to be laughable.

This has nothing to do with theory. Again, communism is fundamentally a democratic process run by the proletariat. Neither the USSR and China have not been run as Democracies. What Stalin, Putin, Mao or Xi says, goes. And anyone who disagrees just disappears. This has nothing to do with ideology. It's the mechanics of government.

These are all acknowledged facts. You're purposefully ignoring them to fit in with your ideological bent. It hurts you and it hurts me when you ignore facts and reality. And I don't mean emotionally, I mean real hurt. Economic hurt. Political hurt. When we give in to propaganda and "fake news" of the sort that lets obvious dictatorships hide behind their rhetoric just because we don't like what that rhetoric entitles we ignore their abuses and leave ourselves open to those same abuses. Nows the time to get woke. You're being had. You're being manipulated.

Re:Don't know enough about Cuba & Yugoslavia

[jpaine619]

For the love of god... Show me one instance of Communism that was implemented as you describe.. You cannot can you? If 100% of "communist" countries operate a certain way, THAT is communism. I don't disagree that it wasn't implemented as Marx laid out. But that doesn't matter. NOBODY has implemented it that way. It was implemented in a certain way and that's what it is. If you could show me one single instance of a communist country that was implemented as Marx described, I'd agree with you 100%. But it's 100% the way I describe it, and 0% the way you and Marx describe it.

By the way, fascists don't nationalize private business. Hitler was a fascist, he didn't seize private enterprise, well... except from the Jews.. But that's a different can of worms.. He knew you had to have private enterprise to fund the government and the socialist programs that he did implement.

I'd also argue that that is about the sole practical difference between how Communism and Fascism are IMPLEMENTED. One has private enterprise, one does not. Both are dictatorships IN PRACTICE. In fact, if China continues down the road they are on they'll be more closely aligned with Fascism than Communism as they are allowing more and more private business.

Those two ideologies cannot be implemented any other way. If they could, there would be at least one instance where they had, most likely. Any system of government that does not account for human nature is a STUPID form of government... And in Communism, as described by Marx, that is one of the fundamental flaws.. Of course, the other one is that socialism is fucking evil.. But I suspect if I start in on that your head will explode.

Re:Don't know enough about Cuba & Yugoslavia

[jpaine619]

This has nothing to do with theory. Again, communism is fundamentally a democratic process run by the proletariat. Neither the USSR and China have not been run as Democracies. What Stalin, Putin, Mao or Xi says, goes.

Of course it does... Communism, as you describe it, is only theory. It has never been put into practice. Communism, as I describe it, is the only way it has ever been implemented.

If you don't understand that.. then we are going to have one hell of a difficult time communicating.. I operate in the real world. Not in some fantasy that only exists in a book... I don't mean that tongue-in-cheek. I mean it quite literally.

So I keep reading...

[kaatochacha]

Millennials are more likely to fall for scams, less likely to divorce, more likely to eschew large amounts possessions, more likely to own a small home or rent.
Apparently, Millennial are simply Victorians

Re:People going out in the world are more vulnerab

[kaatochacha]

That's pretty funny. "Well, the Millenials fall for scams becuase they're gonig out into the world and are vulnerable, while the older people are just greedy and stupid for falling for them."

No. If you fall for an obvious scam, you're a moron. Full Stop. Hell, you've got the entire internet to warn you against them, people twenty years ago only had word of mouth.
And only the tail end of the millennials are going out anywhere, the rest should already have settled in.

Re:Millenials- AMIRITE

[kaatochacha]

Yes, the sane ones will withdraw to GALTS GULCH ;)
(ducks)

Re: True, but most kids only take Econ 101

[Brujis]

Canada is an example of the failure of public medical. It has crappy service, long wait times and is absolutely pathetic. I live in NZ and here I have private medical insurance that costs less than 1/23rd as much as the portion of my taxes that go to the public system. My private medical covers everything that the public system does and more (dental, non-subsidised teatments and medication, private rooms, higher standard of care etc etc etc) and is cheaper because there is nothing that can be done that can't be done worse by government. This holds true for every single country that has private insurance and public systems. As to America being expensive that is the teens of thousands of pages of regulations placed upon n the industry, like the one that restricts the number of new doctors (not based upon qualifications but just the number), that prevent interstate sales, that prevent direct bargaining etc etc etc.

Re:"Educated" by liberals. Whos shocked?

[kaatochacha]

You sound like every deluded fool I backpacked around with in my twenties. Every difference from what they knew in the US was the best thing ever. Instead of seeing the sites and making judgement on what they knew versus what they were experiencing.
"Oh, look how they slice their bread. SOOOOO much better".
"Oh, look how cute that street layout is. it makes SOOOOOO much more sense.".

I agree, seeing the world is good. Saying the US is a hellhole makes you, well, just like them.

Re:"Educated" by liberals. Whos shocked?

[Opportunist]

I've seen plenty of the US. If you like it, awesome, at least one country we won't get refugees from, I guess. But bluntly, it's a bit like an oversized Disneyworld. Really awesome for a vacation and if you have money, you can basically get whatever you want and have a blast. But I wouldn't want to work there, ever. Or have to live there for more than maybe a month or so.

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[strikethree]

Long time no see bro. (megaton here)

I gave (give) a shit about you and I am a Gen-X'er too :)

Are you and Angel_X11 still together? It has been a decade since we last spoke.

BTW, my username/password is still active on your servers but there is no home directory so I can't do anything. *sigh*

 

Re:Gen-X are millennials now?

[OrangeTide]

Yup, we're still together, and currently house shopping. You can always email me for support (orange@ should work) or on FreeNode (OrangeTide).

I took a bunch of the old accounts people used and disabled them. When we had trouble with the UID assignments when restoring back-ups, I restored all the old accounts (merged /etc/passwd basically) without home directories. Today I'll go through and disable all the old accounts completely for safety's sake.

I re-enabled your account with a fresh home dir. If you need a restore from back-up that is possible but it may take me several days to find it. I'm kind of a terrible sysadmin and I have a tar inside a tar inside a tar inside a tar. Hopefully it's not one in the backups on DAT72, for a drive that doesn't boot in my new PC.(EFI/BIOS hangs during detection)